The Indoor Maps Program is appropriate for the owners or operators of almost any large venue, public or private.
[table omitted]
The exceptions are as follows:
• Convention centers: accurate indoor positioning requires a relatively stable Wi-Fi network to be present. In the exhibition halls of convention centers this is generally not the case as the Wi-Fi is commonly changed for each event.
• Warehouses: it can be difficult to provide accurate indoor in large empty warehouses. However, if the warehouse is filled with equipment, shelves or other objects this is less of an issue and indoor positioning can be made to work well.
• Any small building, office, shop or restaurant: the basic rule is that if the space is so small you can’t get lost, then indoor positioning is not appropriate for that location.
I work in the transit industry and one of the issues is mapping where equipment is installed in a standardized way.
Setting up a profile like this for transit based on GeoJSON would allow standardization of things like station maps, bus transfer stations, platforms, boarding points, faregate arrays, ticket vending arrays etc etc.
GTFS and GTFS-RT are starting to standardize the routing/vehicle/scheduling layer, so this would be adjunct to that.
The only use case I can think of is for large indoor shopping centres, like Westfield type things. Every so often I want to find a shop in their and have to use the digital maps they have but it would be cool if it was just in Apple Maps ready to go.
Maybe the same for a University Campus etc.
I couldn’t get what types those would be fit in but in general:
- train/bus stations: the biggest ones are notoriously hard to navigate, even for people going in everyday, if they ever have to choose another path. In the US I expect few of them, in EU/Asia there’s a good number of shopping mall size stations.
- aeroports, as a variation of the above, although I wouldn’t download a plan just for that
- government buildings / hospitals
- underground malls. They are particularly harder to navigate than standard malls.
Raph Koster (MMO designer and expert at Massively Multiuser stuff) a rough vision for what this type of tech is probably intended for. He discusses it briefly towards the end of his (VERY strongly recommended!) talk "Still Logged In: What AR and VR Can Learn from MMOs"[1]. His essay "How to build the scary future today"[2] goes into more detail.
The overly simplistic TL;DR is: the people currently trying to track everything you do online would really love a future where all your offline physical stuff had a unique serial number and regularly updated room/gps/etc location data. An indoor map of logical features would be a useful component in that future.
I'm sure there are other, more beneficial uses as well. All technology is dual use. To understand the full impact of a proposed technology, as Raph Koster advised[1], "Every feature must be looked at as a weapon."
It is one of those things too inconsistent to rely on at this point - most buildings do not have internal maps. If I can’t find the restroom or a place, I look for an analog map or someone to ask at this point.
A lot of companies (Apple included) have digital internal maps of their buildings and offices - that’s a use-case I’ve used, likely because I know it is available.
One application for this data that comes to mind is computer-aided narrated navigation for the visually impaired.
A challenge of mapping indoor areas for this application (and others) is the sometimes dynamic nature of interior environments.
Using some of the listed categories as examples, furniture is moved or replaced, vegetation is changed (or changes), vending machines are added or moved, escalators are temporarily out of service, food trucks by nature may move, and so forth.
You might use indoor maps if you had more with better accuracy and relevance. For one thing this might help with finding where the vacuum bot got stuck and why.
Someone|5 years ago
Who should join the Indoor Program
The Indoor Maps Program is appropriate for the owners or operators of almost any large venue, public or private.
[table omitted]
The exceptions are as follows:
• Convention centers: accurate indoor positioning requires a relatively stable Wi-Fi network to be present. In the exhibition halls of convention centers this is generally not the case as the Wi-Fi is commonly changed for each event.
• Warehouses: it can be difficult to provide accurate indoor in large empty warehouses. However, if the warehouse is filled with equipment, shelves or other objects this is less of an issue and indoor positioning can be made to work well.
• Any small building, office, shop or restaurant: the basic rule is that if the space is so small you can’t get lost, then indoor positioning is not appropriate for that location.
rswail|5 years ago
Setting up a profile like this for transit based on GeoJSON would allow standardization of things like station maps, bus transfer stations, platforms, boarding points, faregate arrays, ticket vending arrays etc etc.
GTFS and GTFS-RT are starting to standardize the routing/vehicle/scheduling layer, so this would be adjunct to that.
opyh|5 years ago
Milner08|5 years ago
But most days I have no use for it.
JacobDotVI|5 years ago
I have been to some Westfields (or perhaps it was a Simon property) where this is already available. I can attest that it is very helpful!
Angostura|5 years ago
jfengel|5 years ago
hrktb|5 years ago
- train/bus stations: the biggest ones are notoriously hard to navigate, even for people going in everyday, if they ever have to choose another path. In the US I expect few of them, in EU/Asia there’s a good number of shopping mall size stations.
- aeroports, as a variation of the above, although I wouldn’t download a plan just for that
- government buildings / hospitals
- underground malls. They are particularly harder to navigate than standard malls.
pdkl95|5 years ago
The overly simplistic TL;DR is: the people currently trying to track everything you do online would really love a future where all your offline physical stuff had a unique serial number and regularly updated room/gps/etc location data. An indoor map of logical features would be a useful component in that future.
I'm sure there are other, more beneficial uses as well. All technology is dual use. To understand the full impact of a proposed technology, as Raph Koster advised[1], "Every feature must be looked at as a weapon."
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgw8RLHv1j4
[2] https://www.raphkoster.com/2014/06/11/how-to-build-the-scary...
alextheparrot|5 years ago
A lot of companies (Apple included) have digital internal maps of their buildings and offices - that’s a use-case I’ve used, likely because I know it is available.
KaiserPro|5 years ago
Indoor maps are a stepping stone for getting SLAM/global visual navigation systems to work.
The holy grail is a "map" that works both indoors and outdoors, is accurate to the CM, updates itself, without GPS.
Its possible, but not without cloud services.
pugworthy|5 years ago
A challenge of mapping indoor areas for this application (and others) is the sometimes dynamic nature of interior environments.
Using some of the listed categories as examples, furniture is moved or replaced, vegetation is changed (or changes), vending machines are added or moved, escalators are temporarily out of service, food trucks by nature may move, and so forth.
benhurmarcel|5 years ago
m0llusk|5 years ago
daniellarusso|5 years ago